This page includes information about the aims and scope of Reproductive Health, editorial policies, open access and article-processing charges, the peer review process and other information. For details of how to prepare and submit a manuscript through the online submission system, please see the instructions for authors.

Aims & scope

Reproductive Health is an open access, peer-reviewed online journal focusing on all aspects of human reproduction.

Reproductive health is defined as a state of physical, mental, and social well-being in all matters relating to the reproductive system, at all stages of life. Good reproductive health implies that people are able to have a satisfying and safe sex life, the capability to reproduce and the freedom to decide if, when, and how often to do so. Men and women should be informed about and have access to safe, effective, affordable, and acceptable methods of family planning of their choice, and the right to appropriate health-care services that enable women to safely go through pregnancy and childbirth. Reproductive Health has a particular interest on the impact changes in reproductive health have globally, and therefore encourages submissions from researchers based in low- and middle-income countries.

The challenge of the field is to evaluate current promising interventions rigorously, address emerging issues such as synthesizing ever-increasing research findings, and develop innovative dissemination and communication strategies.

The journal invites submissions on research in reproductive health, including social and gender issues, sexual health, country and population specific issues, assessment of service provision, education and training and also in a broader range of gynaecological and obstetrical topics related to reproductive health.

Maternal health is one of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDG5) and in the countdown to the Millennium Development Goals deadline in 2015, implementation of strategies to improve maternal health are increasingly the focus of the international research community. Reproductive Health is keen to publish reports of studies in low and middle-income countries related to these goals and maternal health.

Reproductive Health aims to provide a platform that helps authors to share their knowledge with a wider audience, and sustains a rapid process for submissions resulting in high quality publications. We further aim to contribute towards reducing the inequity in publications from low- and middle-income countries. Our audience is global and we intend to share research results in reproductive health from all parts of the world.

Open access

All articles published by Reproductive Health are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

Authors of articles published in Reproductive Health are the copyright holders of their articles and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate the article, according to the BioMed Central copyright and license agreement.

For authors who are US government employees or are prevented from being copyright holders for similar reasons, BioMed Central can accommodate non-standard copyright lines. Please contact us if further information is needed.

Article-processing charges

Open access publishing is not without costs. Reproductive Health therefore levies an article-processing charge of £1370/$2145/€1745 for each article accepted for publication. If the submitting author's institution is a Member, the cost of the article-processing charge is covered by the membership, and no further charge is payable. In the case of authors whose institutions are Supporter Members, however, a discounted article-processing charge is payable by the author.
We routinely waive charges for authors from low-income countries. For other countries, article-processing charge waivers or discounts are granted on a case-by-case basis to authors with insufficient funds. Authors can request a waiver or discount during the submission process. For further details, see our article-processing charge page.

Indexing services

All articles published in Reproductive Health are included in PubMed, the most widely used biomedical bibliographic database service, which is run by the US National Library of Medicine. Other bibliographic databases that index articles published in Reproductive Health include:

CAS

Citebase

DOAJ

Embase

EmCare

Google Scholar

MEDLINE

OAIster

PubMed

PubMed Central

Science Citation Index Expanded

SCImago

Scopus

SOCOLAR

Zetoc

The full text of all research articles is deposited in PubMed Central, the US National Library of Medicine's full-text repository of life science literature, and other digital archives including e-Depot (The Netherlands).

The full text of all research articles published by BioMed Central is also available on SpringerLink.

Publication and peer review process

Criteria for publication

Research: reports of data from original research and clinical trial outcomes.

Reviews: comprehensive, authoritative descriptions of any subject within the scope of the journal.

Case reports: reports of clinical cases that can be educational, describe a diagnostic or therapeutic dilemma, suggest an association, or present an important adverse reaction.

Commentaries: short, focused articles of opinions or reports on any subject within the journal's scope. They focus on specific issues and are about 800 words.

Study protocols: description of proposed or ongoing research, providing a detailed account of the hypothesis, rationale, and methodology of the study.

Peer-review policies

Peer review in Reproductive Health is designed to ensure that the research published is 'good science'.

The peer review process will be open.

Manuscripts that span a wide range of scientific interests are considered, but only if results and conclusions are scientifically justified and not misleading.

Submitted manuscripts will be reviewed by at least two external experts identified by the Editorial Board. The peer reviewers will assess the manuscript for scientific content, actuality and relevance of the topic, as well as for presentation and clarity of writing. Generally, there will be 2 revisions allowed per article.

Peer reviewers will have the following options for each article:

accept without revision

accept after minor revisions

neither accept nor reject until author(s) make revisions and resubmit

reject because scientifically unsound

Reproductive Health operates using an open peer review system, where the reviewers' names are included on the peer review reports. In addition, if the article is published, the named reports are published online alongside the article as part of a 'pre-publication history'. All previous versions of the manuscript, and all author responses to the reviewers are also available to readers.

Authors will be able to check the progress of their manuscript through the submission system at any time by logging into My Reproductive Health, a personalized section of the site.

Reprints

High-quality, bound reprints can be purchased for all articles published. Please see our reprints website for further information about ordering reprints.

Supplements

Reproductive Health will consider supplements based on proceedings (full articles or meeting abstracts), reviews or research. All articles submitted for publication in supplements are subject to peer review. Published supplements are fully searchable and freely accessible online and can also be produced in print. All full length articles (proceedings, reviews or research articles) are indexed by PubMed. PubMed displays the title of the supplement only in the case of meeting abstract collections. For further information, please contact us.

Editorial policies

Citing articles in Reproductive Health

Articles in Reproductive Health should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Why publish your article in Reproductive Health?

High visibility

Reproductive Health's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience. Articles that have been especially highly accessed are highlighted with a 'Highly accessed' graphic, which appears on the journal's contents pages and search results.

Speed of publication

Reproductive Health offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files).
Articles will be published with their final citation after acceptance, in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF; the article will then be available through Reproductive Health, BioMed Central and PubMed Central and will also be included in PubMed.

Flexibility

Online publication in Reproductive Health gives authors the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other articles).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in Reproductive Health are included in article alerts and regular email updates. Some may be included in abstract books mailed to academics and are highlighted on Reproductive Health's pages and on the BioMed Central homepage.

In addition, articles published in Reproductive Health may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in Reproductive Health. A list of articles recently press-released by journals published by BioMed Central is available here.

Copyright

Authors of articles published in Reproductive Health retain the copyright of their articles and are free to reproduce and disseminate their work (for further details, see the BioMed Central copyright policy and license agreement).

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from BioMed Central, please click here.